


all the stupid shit that young kids do*

by ohmygodwhy



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, In a sense, M/M, Underage Drinking, implied betty/jug or archie/jug it's very open-ended, jug is a heartbroken fool........but what else is new, post-episode 2.05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-14
Updated: 2017-12-14
Packaged: 2019-02-14 15:15:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13010493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmygodwhy/pseuds/ohmygodwhy
Summary: *including but not limited to: underage drinking, punching your crush and kissing in back rooms of shady bars. welcome to the gang.





	all the stupid shit that young kids do*

**Author's Note:**

  * For [M_Monoceros](https://archiveofourown.org/users/M_Monoceros/gifts).



> so!! i wanted to get this out to you now because i'm gonna be really busy this next week or so and i didn't wanna be late or forget to post it altogether lmao. i gotta say ALL of your prompts were fantastic and i was stuck trying to decide between them for the longest time in the world but eventually this one won out bc honestly, how could i not take the opportunity sweet pea's been lowkey longing for?? i hope you enjoy it! happy holidays, whatever you celebrate!!

 

There’s nothing more not-relaxing than loud noises and like a hundred shots of alcohol right after getting the absolute shit beat out of you. Jughead would know. He thinks maybe a rib or two is broken. His head is fucking pounding. The adrenaline still hasn’t quite worn off, yet, so he’s stuck somewhere between restless and exhausted. He feels happy in a distant sort of way, and almost proud of himself, and isn’t sure whether or not he’s relieved.

He’s never gotten very drunk before—tries not to get drunk, period, because he knows better than anyone what kind of shit you can into when you’re drunk, and how sad or angry you can get, and how vulnerable you are to everything and everyone—but he thinks this is a special occasion, maybe. Someone pats him on the back and shoves a shot in his hand and he downs it with only a fleeting second thought. It burns as it goes down, but brass knuckles hurt like a bitch. 

“How do you feel?” Toni asks, lounging back on the seat next to him, a bottle—not open, yet—hanging loosely in her hand. 

“Like I’m dying,” he says honestly, and she laughs. 

“Yeah, you look like it.” 

“I think I’m bleeding internally,” he complains. 

“Don’t be a baby,” Toni rolls her eyes. And then, a little softer, “They wouldn’t hit you  _ that  _ hard. No one here’s trying to kill you, y’know; I think Sweet Pea was rooting for you.” 

Jughead snorts a little. His face stings at the mention. 

“I’m serious,” Toni says, finally tipping her bottle back to take a sip, “He was just upset you didn’t wanna hang with him before. He acts tough, but he’s a little bitch on the inside.” 

“Everyone’s a little bitch on the inside,” Jughead says absently. His head feels a little fuzzy, and the words slip out like nothing.

Toni laughs again, the sound crisp and quiet, “Not me.”

“Not you,” Jughead agrees. He smiles a little bit, because Toni is smiling, and the atmosphere of the place is light instead of all dim and shady for once. 

“Glad you made it, Jug,” she says, patting him on the back, right over the serpent on his jacket. “You’re tougher than you look.” 

“Thanks,” he says. She offers him the bottle, and he takes a long drink. Brass knuckles hurt like a bitch, and he hopes he can get his head fuzzy enough that it’ll stop hurting so bad. 

A few people come around to congratulate him. The guy who might’ve broken one of his ribs slaps him on the back and pushes another drink into his hand as an apology. 

He floats upstairs somewhere in the middle of it all, head light but legs heavy. Some kid is smoking on the staircase. There’s a back room he finds his way into. He leans heavy against the wall and lets out a long breath, before he notices that Sweet Pea’s in the room with him. 

Oh, he thinks.

“Hey,” he says. 

“Hey,” Sweet Pea says, and pushes himself up off the couch that looks very old and very comfortable. “You come back here to brood?”

“Did you?” 

Sweet Pea smiles a little, shakes his head. “You look like shit.”

“I feel like it. You hit hard.”

Sweet Pea shrugs, fishing the brass knuckles out of his back pocket, which ok. Jughead wonders vaguely if he still has that knife on him. He wonders if maybe Sweet Pea is planning on hitting him again for some reason, but he just says, “You want ‘em?”

“What?”

He holds the brass knuckles out, “Do you want ‘em?”

“Not really,” he says, but Sweet Pea tosses them at him anyways. It’s incredible, really, that he actually manages to catch them. He only fumbles a little bit, which is amazing. Good job, he thinks to himself. 

Jughead looks at them for a moment, cool and heavy in his hands, before he slips them into his own back pocket.

“Y’know,” Sweet Pea is saying, “For a minute there I thought you weren’t gonna get up.”

Jughead shrugs, feeling loose and light, “Takes more than that, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Sweet Pea says, looks at him like he’s considering, “Guess it does. Fits you good, by the way. The jacket. I thought you were gonna look like a jackass, but it actually works pretty well.”

“Thanks,” he says; can’t help the small smile that spreads across his face, slow like molasses, “You’ve always looked like a jackass in yours.” 

Sweet Pea laughs instead of getting defensive, which is a first. “You say  _ I’m  _ an asshole.” 

“You are. Everyone’s an asshole this day and age.” 

“Everyone’s an asshole every day and age.” 

Jughead just laughs, “I can’t believe you punched me with brass fucking knuckles on. Who does that?” 

“I got hit with ‘em,” Sweet Pea says, like that answers the question, “It’s just how you do it. Plus, you were really pissing me off before.” 

_ Yeah, I tend to do that, _ he almost says. Thinks about Toni and says instead, “I heard it’s cause you were upset I wouldn’t hang with you.” 

“It’s cause I was tryna be welcoming and shit and your ass didn’t even acknowledge it.” 

“Didn’t know letting me get beat up counted as you being welcoming.” 

“I mean before that,” he says, seemingly not registering the sarcasm in his voice; it’s understandable, Jughead thinks vaguely, he isn’t registering much of anything himself. “Like, with the quarry and stuff. You ask us to look into shit for you but you won’t hang with us? Fucked up.” 

He actually sounds upset about it, to the point where Jughead is vaguely concerned. The first time he saw Sweet Pea he was storming out of the lit classroom. He gets upset about a lot of things, but not the sad kind of upset. It’s usually the angry kind. 

“I’m hangin’ with you now,” he says, because Sweet Pea is kinda right, and hearing him the sad kind of upset is almost unsettling,  “Sorry I didn’t welcome the welcome committee. There’s just been…a lotta shit happening lately.” 

“I feel that,” Sweet Pea says, sighing long and deep and heavy: 

There’s a moment of not-quite-silence, faint sound of music and laughter and pool balls clinking together, where they just sort of look at each other. Sweet Pea’s not all that bad-looking, when you actually take the time to look, which Jughead hasn’t really had the time to do, lately. Been a little too worried about Archie’s rich kid gang and wannabe serial killers and his dad going to jail and shit. Stressful stuff. 

He doesn’t feel very stressed right now. It’s all kind of faded to background noise, the way his head doesn’t hurt as much anymore now that it’s all light and floaty. He feels vaguely like he might float away if he closes his eyes. He likes the feeling. Likes feeling loose and relaxed and not worried. Likes the way the dim light reflects off of Sweet Pea’s eyes. Likes the way his hair falls. Likes the way he’s looking at him, like he’s actually something to be looked at. 

So he probably shouldn’t be surprised when Sweet Pea kisses him. He’s not, really. Can’t find it in himself to be confused, either. Kind of just…melts into it? Breathes out and sags against the wall behind him so he has something to ground him, to keep him from finally floating away for real. 

He gasps, and Sweet Pea licks into his mouth, hot and heavy. The air is suddenly too hot around him, Sweet Pea’s hand on the back of his neck, on his waist, tugging him closer. He’s always had to bend down to kiss, whether is was Archie or Betty, but now he has to crane his neck upwards. Tall fucker, he thinks somewhere—Sweet Pea laughs against his lips and he realizes he said it out loud. 

“Fuck you,” he says, and Sweet Pea just kisses him again, exaggerating the way he bends down, eyes shining. Jughead goes to smack him, but just ends up fisting a hand in his jacket instead, something to steady him where the hand on his waist just makes his knees weak. 

He thinks maybe this is a bad idea, somewhere in the back of his hazy mind. Thinks about Archie coming to publicly rip his heart out of his chest and tear it all up, and decides he doesn’t really care. He never knows what to do with his hands when he’s sober, but lets them slip down and around and everywhere he can reach now, slow and lazy like the feeling of sleeping late on a Saturday morning and waking up bit by bit, sunlight streaming through the half-shut blinds. 

Sweet Pea smells like hair gel and oil and tastes like sunflower seeds and alcohol. The thought pokes at the back of his mind, beeping like a faint fire alarm or a car horn waking you up at three in the morning. Like a brass-knuckled punch to the face. (He’s not letting that one go until his cheek returns to its normal color.) Sweet Pea slides a hand down to tease the waistline of Jughead’s jeans, slipping a thumb under the hem. 

“Hey,” he gasps out, pulling on Sweet Peas hair, “Hey hey wait a sec, wait, are you drunk?”

Sweet Pea tilts his head a little, like he’s actually thinking about it, like Jughead can’t smell the alcohol on his breath. 

“A little, I think,” he says. 

“Shit,” he says, “Me too.” 

“I know, fuckin lightweight.” 

“I don’t think we should—shit, I don’t think we should—drunk, you know?” 

“Why not? Any other time you woulda punched me for kissing you in the first place.” 

“Not true,” he says, even though maybe it is true, and then, “Don’t want you to be—don’t wanna make you a rebound or whatever.” 

“What a gentleman,” Sweet Pea says, scoffs, maybe; Jughead can’t tell whether or not he’s offended. 

“Fuck off, I’m tryna be nice.” 

“By saying you _ don’t _ wanna get in my pants?” 

“Don’t think I could find my way in if I tried,” he admits. His hand to eye coordination isn’t award winning at the best of times. 

“You want me to stop, then?” 

“No, no, I just—I want,” he falters, doesn’t know how to say what he thinks he wants, “Just, just don’t—“

“Nothing below the belt, nice guy,” Sweet Pea promises, voice somewhere between mocking and friendly— soft, almost — and then kisses him again. 

Which is good. Great, even. Sweet Pea kisses the way he does everything, aggressive and confident and big, like he’s trying to steal all the oxygen from his lungs. It’s nice. Different from Betty, or Archie that one time last summer in the back of his dad’s truck, but nice. Refreshing. Exciting, almost, but also easy, like he’s already been kissing Sweet Pea for ages. Like he’s used to it. 

Sweet Pea cups the side of his face a little too enthusiastically, accidentally presses too hard, right over where he hit him just a few hours ago. “Ow,” he breathes, jerking back and hitting the back of his head on the wall. 

Sweet Pea laughs, the asshole, but whispers a small apology into his mouth, and slides down to cradle the curve of his jaw. His other hand shoves it’s way up the back of his shirt; Jughead gasps at the chill, goosebumps shooting up his spine. 

“Nothing below the belt,” Sweet Pea says again, a stupid fucking smile against his skin. Smug asshole, smug like the look on his face before he punched him, like the way he laughed about Archie’s stupid video, like he way he grins when he pops his dumb milk open at lunch—not smug, he thinks absently, just happy. About stupid things, like the rest of the world. 

His fingers are cool against his back, and his breath is hot against his mouth and on his neck and under his skin. Jughead feels like he’s unwinding, coming undone, and thinks vaguely that he never wants to leave this spot in time, where everything is warm and easy and happy, happy the way he’s happy under the covers of Archie’s bed, happy the way he’s happy spread out on the grass under the tree in the old playground, just being. Little moments he wants to hold in his hands because they make him feel nice. 

He mumbles something about Sweet Pea’s hands being too cold, and the asshole shoves his other hand up the front of his shirt, cool against his stomach. He finds himself missing the feeling of his hand against his neck, but then Sweet Pea is holding his hips, hands warming, and he forgets about it. And he holds him hard, gets a leg between his own and grinds up.

“Below the belt.” Jughead reminds him, speaking too loudly to cover whatever sound he was gonna make. 

“What, afraid you’ll blow your load too quick?” He teases--sounds breathless, pupils blown wide, but pulls his knee back all the same. What a gentleman, he doesn’t say out loud, because it’s gone the moment he thinks it. His headache is coming back, but that’s fine. Sweet Pea gasps when he tugs at his hair like he’s seen in the movies.

Jughead takes a moment to catch his breath, and leans back into it. 

**

He wakes up with a pounding fucking headache. 

He actually thinks the headache might be what woke him up, but he can also hear the old guy two trailers over trying to fix his stupid truck by revving the motor like he does every fucking Saturday, so there’s that. A combination of the two. 

It’s also unreasonably hot, even though it’s still vaguely chilly in the mornings, because, he notices, he’s under two blankets and still has his jeans on. He blinks a few times to clear his vision, and sees that his Official Jacket is lying on the floor next to the bed. Breathes deep and notices, vaguely, that there’s someone on the other side of the bed. Betty? he wonders vaguely. 

Cautiously, he reaches behind him. 

“What the fuck,” Sweet Pea mumbles, and yeah, ok. Not Betty. 

He sits up and immediately lurches, reminding himself of his dad on his worst hangover days. “What the fuck,” he whispers to himself.

What the fuck. He glances behind him just to make sure, and yeah, there’s Sweet Pea, pushing himself up and rubbing at his eyes.

“Are we in the trailer?” Jughead asks, just to make sure.

“Yeah.”

“How did we get here?”

“Toni.”

“Drove us?”

“Yeah,” Sweet Pea snorts, “I’m not dumb enough to drunk drive a motorcycle.”

“Thank god,” Jughead says, rubbing at his temples. And then, when he thinks for a moment, “Why are you here?”

Sweet Pea shrugs, “You were way out of it, I didn’t want you to trip over a sock and die or something.”

“Oh. That’s nice of you.”

“Also, Toni didn’t wanna drive me all the way home.”

That makes more sense, he thinks vaguely. “Why the fuck are you in here? We have a couch.”

Sweet Pea makes a face, “I was not sleeping on your gross ass couch.”

“It’s not gross,” Jughead argues, even though it kind of is. He thinks it might be older than his sister. Maybe even older than him.

“It looks gross.”

“It looks better than half the shit at the bar.”

“I wouldn’t sleep on that shit, either.”

“I’ve heard stories that say otherwise,” Jughead says, and Sweet Pea flips him off. Jughead stands up and stretches, trying his best not to trip over himself. He hears Sweet Pea crack his neck behind him. “Gross,” he mumbles, and the asshole just laughs. 

Follows him into the kitchen, too, when Jughead drags himself up and out to make some of The Jones’ Family Patented Hangover Cure™. Goes through the fridge like he fucking owns the place and everything. Jughead would be annoyed if he could focus on more than one thing at once. 

“You want sugar?” he asks absently.

“For what?”

“To make it sweeter?” Jughead shrugs, “I dunno, my dad always complained about it being too bitter.” 

Sweet Pea just makes a noncommittal noise, which Jughead chooses to interpret as  _ sure, I’d love some sugar, thank you so much, Jughead,  _ as he passes him his mug.

They fall into a silence, and he can’t tell if it’s a bad one. Sweet Pea scrolls through something on his phone, and Jughead turns on the oven—it’s a reflex, by now, making eggs in the morning after what his dad used to call late nights, only Jughead’s the one who needs the post-alcohol breakfast this time. He wonders what his dad would say. 

“Could you make me some?” Sweet Pea asks, his voice too loud in the small space. 

Jughead almost says no, because his face still fucking hurts when he moves too much, but he says “Sure,” instead, because he had the guy’s tongue halfway down his throat like five hours ago. Common courtesy. Plus, Sweet Pea doesn’t look like he’s planning on leaving anytime soon, leaving his mug on the counter and padding over to the bathroom. 

The door clicks shut, and Jughead breathes deep and heavy. He flips the scrambled eggs onto a plate and cracks open a new one. He feels vaguely like a college girl in some romantic comedy who’s just made a shitty decision and slept with an ex or something. Which is ridiculous, because this if this is any kind of movie, it is not a romantic comedy. He just never really thought he’d be here. Doesn’t know how he should feel about it. Doesn’t know how Sweet Pea feels about it, cracking his neck as he walks out of the bathroom and snatches up the plate. 

“Those were mine,” Jughead says, but he’s too tired to put effort into sounding annoyed. 

“I’m eating them before they get cold,” Sweet Pea says, “Don’t wanna waste ‘em.”

Jughead concedes, and hears Sweet Pea drag his feet on the ground and fall back into the chair in the living room. FP’s chair, he thinks vaguely. Jughead used to get swatted on the back on the head whenever he tried to sit in that chair. 

He frowns at the thought, finishing up his own eggs at flicking the stove off. He grabs the tabasco and pepper and walks the five steps over to the couch. Sweet Pea looks up from his phone when he sits down.

A pause. Jughead takes a bite of his food. 

“So,” he starts, “Last night, did we— well, did we…?”

“Nothing below the belt, remember?” Sweet Pea saves him from having to continue, “You were very adamant about it.” 

“Okay,” he breathes, relaxing a bit, “Okay, cool.”

“But,” Sweet Pea says, grinning around his fork, “Now that we’re unoccupied…”

“I feel like if I talk too fast I’ll pass out,” he admits, and Sweet Pea laughs. It hurts his fucking head a little, but Jughead smiles anyways. It’s a nice laugh, when it doesn’t sound like an orchestra. 

“Well, if you ever change your mind,”

“I know where to find you. And you know where to find me.”

Sweet Pea nudges him with his foot. Jughead kicks back, because he feels weird, uncomfortable in his own skin. Every movie he’s seen has the morning-after scene all awkward—the people are always embarrassed, get out of there as fast as they can, shoes in their hands, all ashamed. Sweet Pea doesn’t seem all that ashamed, and he doesn’t seem embarrassed, either. Doesn’t seem uncomfortable, spread out like he just belongs in his living room somehow. 

He thinks about people slipping out of a dorm room with high heels in their hands or skipping breakfast and leaving their ties undone. It seems like the usual, proper thing to do, but Sweet Pea’s never been very proper. Would probably spit on the very idea of propriety. Northside bullshit, he can hear him saying.

He opens his mouth to say something about how Sweet Pea should wash his fucking hair already, when his phone goes off. He glances over to see Archie’s face light up the screen.

“Archie,” he says to Sweet Pea’s questioning glance.

“That Northside dick from yesterday?”

“Yeah,” Jughead says around the lump in his throat. His thumb hovers over the phone.

Sweet Pea makes some kind of sound around his fork, “Ignore him,” he says. “Don’t let those Northsiders walk all over you.”

Jughead looks at his phone for a few more moments, and hits decline. 

 


End file.
